


The Good-Bye Girl

by Oddities1991



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:40:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oddities1991/pseuds/Oddities1991
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the time comes to say the good-byes, Caroline wishes, not for the first time, that she could have someone to take with her into eternity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good-Bye Girl

When the time comes to say the good-byes, Caroline wishes, not for the first time, that she could have someone to take with her into eternity. Stefan tells her not to dwell on it. That she’d regret it. That there’s a chance – that there’s always a chance – for the humanity to leave her Chosen.

She looks at herself five years later with her forever-blonde hair, perfect skin and pink ribbon wrapped around her neck and realizes that he’s right. Of course, Stefan is always right. It’s like this thing he does. She blames it on his age. He barley looks older than she is and he’s got so many ‘he’s-rights’ that she’s given up trying to one up him.

It’s okay, though. He’s here, standing beside her and waiting patiently like he always does. His fingers are intertwined with hers but his heart remains unburdened. He is Stefan and he’s here with her and not Elena. Somehow, that lets her know that everything is going to be okay.

She knows - standing in front of this perfect white fenced house with its barking dog and manicured grass - that she is stalling. She thinks: this should be mine. Her hands remain at her sides because it’s been forever since she’s been here and she can’t bring herself to raise them against the place she’d turned her back on when she was eleven.

Now, she can picture her mother inside wearing a sheriff’s costume and protecting the neighborhood like one of those lame comic book heroines; she can picture herself forever young, clinging to daddy’s hands and babbling about her newest crush and later crying when Elena steals yet another boy. She can picture her and Bonnie sneaking around the back, playing princess and dragons and Bonnie’s the knight-in-shining-armor because they can’t get Jeremy to join and Caroline refuses to play the boy. She can picture her parents growing old in this house, laughing together again. Friends at least, if nothing else because what else can you do but settle for the one you claim to love?

The one thing she can’t picture is herself as she is, smiling at the man her father loves like she doesn’t hate the man who took him away. She can’t see the seventeen year old girl who did whatever she could to have a Salvatore brother on her arm no matter the cost all because Elena had one. She doesn’t belong in this house with its complaining baby girl and two fussy fathers who replace the screaming husband and wife. She isn’t supposed to be the one who would run cheerfully towards the furious barking dog who, Stefan tells her for the umpteenth time, is only protecting his family.

The barking hurts her more than the leaving does, somehow. Its her blood, her family, her home but the dog is yelling at them, screaming at them like she is an intruder. It tells her she doesn’t belong. It sounds so final and it hurts so much but Stefan stands beside her, squeezes her hands and she remembers to breathe before he can whisper the words. It’s been five years and people are starting to wonder, so she knows that she has to do this.

They don’t have a choice but the unfairness of it all hits hard at her chest. It breaks something inside of her. She can feel it and by the second squeeze – this one a little too hard even for a vampire – she knows that Stefan can feel it too.

She also knows that this will be the last time she has to play the human she used to be. When this is over her father will get to remember that she loves him and that she finds his second daughter adorable with her pink tutu and love for Barbie and that she doesn’t hate the man – Stephen – who took daddy away. He will remember her as his shining light and not the shadow of the person she’d become. Most importantly, he will remember that she forgave him.

Lifting her hand, she pulls on a smile that doesn’t feel like it belongs. She knocks softly on the door. When it opens, it’s only Stefan’s hand that keep her from turning around and running half way across the world in tears. It is Stefan’s gentle squeeze that tells her she can do this. It is Stefan’s gentle quirk of his lips that gives her enough courage to hold her head high and smile at the door.

It is the armor that is Stefan that forces her voice chipper as she says, “Hi, Stephen. Is my dad home?” though they all know that with his new daughter in his arms, her father is right behind Stephen avoiding the inevitable.


End file.
